


We'll never be royals...

by oldwickedsongs



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 01:57:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1840087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldwickedsongs/pseuds/oldwickedsongs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A various collection of fills for Boardwalk's ficathons. The majority are Team NY-centric (Charlie, AR, Meyer, Carolyn) but some deal with Nucky, Jimmy, Richard and various others. Most are gen. One or two may be graphic I will do my best to warn. Thank you!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "I wouldn’t want it any other way" AR, R for addiction (drug or gambling) and coarse language.

It isn’t that you need it.   
  
You make it just  _fine_  without it because you have before and you will again but it takes the edge off, sometimes, when you’re irritable and the suckers are out in full force with their hare-brain schemes and their grubby paws; always after you, always after the roll in your pocket like you’re some g-ddamn charity instead of a businessman.   
  
But you try not to let it bother you (because you know it shouldn’t, and hadn’t always, and you wonder why it does now and you’re scaring Carolyn, you can see it in her eyes), count backwards from one hundred and ask Inez or Bobbie to fill up the spaces in between. But the itch is there.   
  
The sun is too bright, and the cold makes your bones hurt. You’re getting old.   
  
There are times, even though you know it never works when you try dice or drink to numb it. You can swallow down the whisky mixed with ginger beer or champagne, or vodka though it hurts your stomach, turns sour in your throat and never does what you want it to. Sure, your head will get soupy enough that your bones won’t hurt anymore and when you tug Bobbie, or Inez (or Benny, or Meyer…or Charlie when you’re feeling daring, wanting to  _bet it all_  he won’t notice) nearer to taste them, it almost feels real. And you can fuck them like it doesn’t mean anything, like it isn’t chiseling away a little  _of you_  (your marriage, your soul…but when does any of that matter, you can drink it down because you won’t drown it in the needle or card hand.) and it’s just two people pulling together for a night.  
  
When you wake up; it’s still there. Like an itch.   
  
Until finally you cave, you skim a little off the top so no one will notice and pretend it isn’t stealing from your wife, your boys like you’re some common  _punk_  instead of King of New York. Sometimes you catch their looks; know they’re whispering about it behind your back (worried, not plotting although you can’t be sure of the latter and that fear burns you whole) and you  **hurt.**  
  
But the bitch of it all, the rub, the con- is when you finally do cave? When you push it into your bloodstream and wait for the warmth to follow…everything is warm. Easy again.  
  
And you can be charming, and controlled; her husband, their mentor, the King of Gamblers and shylocks because while it doesn’t make you, it helps. It just makes it a bit easier.   
  
Although for the life of you you can’t remember why it was so difficult in the first place. 


	2. See his eyes and how they start with light getting colder (Manny/AR, AR/Carolyn, PG)

 “You disapprove of her.”   
  
He tries hard, but the hurt is still in Arnold’s voice as he rinses the hallaf and sets the long flat blade to dry above their heads and it’s a bit of the spoiled prince (although of what, Manny has no kingdom to impart his quiet, hungry-eyed cub but Arnold is regal nonetheless) that makes him slide out of grasp when Manny attempts to rub his back.  
  
They stare at each other from across the table, with the body in parts between them and the blood on Rothstein’s arms all the way to his elbows, seeping into his pores like clay before Manny sighs and relents a little. “She’s an actress.”  
  
“I’m a gambler.”  
  
“They’re not known for their fidelity.”  
  
“And I am?”  
  
He’s earnest. It’s the worst thing about Arnold (and when he grows older and that fervor is replaced with something else not even AR can name, Manny will find he misses that emotion of youth) how adamant and unforgiving he can be, forever sniping at the heels for attention. “She’s goyim. She’s not like us.”  
  
Manny can tell it’s something Arnold’s worried about; it’s in the little surrender he gives with a bowed head. He keeps scrubbing at his fingernails until the blood turns the water red, pink, and clears again. “I’m going to marry her.”   
  
“You’ll live to regret it.”  
  
“You sound like my father.” No one pouts as well as Arnold can, like his whole world is crumbling because of one thing said. “…I love her. I need her.”   
  
“But she doesn’t belong in our world.”  
  
Arnold hesitates again, in that wounded way no one but Manny and perhaps that dark haired showgirl may see. It makes Manny hurt a little for the boy who should be his son but isn’t. There’s a question in his mind; if Abe ever wonders how deep the scars go that he left, and if he does, does the Rebbe even care- with the son he did love buried now ten years and the living one with a hole in his chest that only grows with each year and every victory.   
  
“Still entertaining your thoughts of a life within Tammany’s walls, Arnold? A gentlemen with stables…an English name? Will you be some bigshot?” He prods, and with one finger pokes between Arnold’s ribs till the younger man slinks away. “Will you change your name too, Redstone?”  
  
“Rothstein.” He snaps a fury of pink in his cheeks. “I’m not ashamed of what I am.”   
  
“Then put her out of your mind.” Manny returns, he crosses the table wrapping the foreleg, cheeks and maw (gifts worthy of priests alone) in brown paper before motioning to him. “Take this home to your father, and remember what you are, Arnold. Everyone else will.”  
  
There’s a moment when the boy looks down at his hands as if he spotted a stain of blood but within the next moment it’s gone as he turns his attention back to replacing the blades in their sheaths. 


	3. When there's nothing left to burn, you've got to set yourself on fire (AR/Bobbie, G)

 

There is a demitasse cup on Bobbie’s vanity that holds a ring with a solitary pearl set in gold. It’s simple, plain when set against everything else she has spilling from her jewelry boxes like a pirate’s chest but she loves it more than any other bauble any other beau or suitor has given her. She only wears it in the house when Arnold stays the weekend; after Carolyn has disappeared to England or Scotland or wherever his checkbook takes her and he comes to her put together all piecemeal but quieter then he should be and  _I’m just lonely, lucky charm, I hate how quiet the house is without her._  
  
And she never asks to spend the night uptown, and most of the time she can convince herself it’s because she wants nothing to do with the ice bitch’s domain. Let Carolyn remain removed, aloof and on her throne- all pure and fine, hard lines like diamonds or icicles.   
  
Bobbie is warm bodied and blooded and the man she loves, the  _King,_  is the same.   
  
Her man is the Bankroll, King of the Gamblers and there’s a fire in his eyes that burn hot, and steady like coals. Carolyn would chafe away like ash but Bobbie just curls closer, hungry for the warmth. She wonders, sometimes, what brought them together in the first place- because of how careful AR has to be around this woman he calls wife (how quiet his voice gets when she calls, how gentle his movements, like he’s keeping something inside of him iced down or caged- and she wonders if he hates her for it because he can’t be  **true**  with her in the room) and she relishes that she can take it all and keep coming back.   
  
She knows AR sees it too; the fact every time he retreats inward and goes icy all his own, she just digs in a little harder than before as if her own fire could warm them both. Or perhaps set them both ablaze…  
  
…and she wonders if he’d mind going out that way, and knows he wouldn’t. That fever he tries to hide away from Carolyn, from himself, won’t go away. She suspects he knows that and loves the burn scars it leaves on his skin as much as she does.  
  
It’s why she waits for the night the ring he gave her will match the promise he gave Carolyn. She’ll use it better, she knows.   
  
They’re the same, AR and her. Always were. 


	4. Hart Island, (AR/Richard, G)

There’s a potter’s field just outside of town; where the nameless and gone are buried. Atlantic City has its stores of forgotten and faceless; men who came off the trains to make their fortunes and failed be it by gambling dens or speakeasies, or nameless voiceless immigrants who searched for work and found only the unrelenting pace of the Sodom by the sea. There was a major hurricane a few years back and all the dead; too many to shift through and claimed, ended up here. Yellow fever and smallpox have also paid their dues to the land.   
  
Unlike Ypres, or Flander’s there are no perfect bone white stones for each soul lost- just pine markers to mark the grid for the prisoners who come out to inter the bodies a few hundred across and four deep. Jew, Catholic, or Protestant; it doesn’t seem to matter and there are no tags placed in the mouth to say that once this was someone- no toys or baubles they might have loved put beside the children to keep them company.   
  
There is just a grave, and the quiet severity that comes from places like this. The stillness of battlegrounds. The sacredness of a churchyard.  
  
And Richard thinks; if there was a place for Jimmy somewhere after Nucky was done with him- this would be the place.   
  
(The obvious repository, the ocean, is purposely ignored because his friend was a soldier and if there were any place for him; this is it. No Man’s Land. Like he never left.)   
  
There’s a man standing by the gravesides by the time Richard approached, so richly dressed that he thinks perhaps it was one of lawyers, perhaps one of the Commodore’s old guards but he’s too young- and too invested in the site before him to be one. There’s something in his hand too that Richard cannot make out as treks nearer.   
  
He made no sound as he came closer but still the older man turned, and the action was so precise and sharp that Richard wondered if he had training. He was only a little older then Richard, clean shaven and guarded. There was something gray about his features; the tight mouth and dull brown eyes that didn’t flinch or recoil as those normally did when faced with the mask. There wasn’t even curiosity there. The man seemed to merely take in Richard’s presence and dismiss it, as if it had no business there.   
  
“Sorry.” Richard grunted, out of obligation. It was more manners then sincerity, mostly because this man’s expression was one of questioning rather than grief. It seemed a duty, rather than mourning.   
  
“No need, I was just leaving.” A New York accent so an American, and Richard wondered who on earth could he be visiting there, among the nameless. “I’m just paying my respects.”  
  
“Who did you lose?” Even as he said it, Richard felt like he was cheapening something. Somehow.  
  
The gray man beside him seemed unmoved. He simply knelt to set down what he was carrying. The rock looked insignificant and plain against the soil, but somehow if it was a memorial it seemed fitting there; simple and swallowed up by the city. Like Jimmy.   
  
“Some man’s son.” He said and there was a heaviness there Richard didn’t need to press to understand. 


	5. And we called for our fathers, but our fathers had died (Charlie/Meyer, G)

  
Charlie finds him of all places, smoking on AR’s bed.   
  
Meyer is fully dressed- in his finest suit, a dark charcoal that looks like something Rothstein would’ve worn or put him in, with the breast torn- laying down as he smokes and staring into nothing, letting the ash fall. The room hasn’t been AR’s in over a year, and the want of life, of  _AR_ , has long since left its mark. There’s out of season clothes thrown about from when the cops came earlier, the splay of linen suits and bright colors in stark contrast to the gray November day outside or the darkness of the room despite it being a little after two in the afternoon.   
  
There’s a few cufflinks, none with their partners, on the dresser (Charlie wonders if the patrolmen pocketed them during the search, along with any gold watches or tie pins AR might have left at home). His offices are a mess, the books scattered and torn where the cops looked for false backs or hidden passages. It’s the same with the offices downtown the boys didn’t get to in time.   
  
He had thought Meyer would be here, looking for the books since Carolyn was at the hospital still with the family.   
  
“She has the books.” Meyer says, quietly, with his tone distant and cold, leaving the rest unspoken,  _she might be a problem._  
  
If she is, we can worry about it later. Charlie thinks, toeing off his shoes to move closer. “We’ll deal with it after he’s planted.”  
  
There’s a twinge of guilt being in this room without AR there, even though he’s been here a hundred times- to fetch AR for his appointments or collect gifts like Sulka ties when he returned from France. Or just to be. But still, it doesn’t feel like AR’s anymore and he can’t be sure if it’s because there’s a body growing cold in a cooler across town or because there’s divorce papers in AR’s desk he was supposed to sign and Charlie feels like a burglar here, encroaching on what isn’t his.   
  
Even the grief.   
  
Meyer is taking it like a Russian soldier, straight on the chest like buckshot. There’s not a red eye, or broken cadence since this whole thing began. There’d just been his mind, keen and sharp like the Bankroll’s; making sure Walker was called, and Tammany, and the other boys. Like most of the city, he’d been preparing for the shit storm that was going to break the moment AR did.   
  
To the old man’s credit, AR never spoke a word. Long live the King.   
  
Meyer is laying on AR’s side of the bed when Charlie crawls beside him. He just glances over and speaks in a tone like he was discussing the elections. “It’s going to be Massiera and Maranzano after this.”  
  
“Yea, I know.”  
  
“We’ll have to kill them. Somehow get the others behind us…”  
  
“Lepke and Waxey might cause trouble. The rest will fall in line…Frank will make sure of it. Think Thompson will help?”  
  
“Sure, he and AR were…” Here Meyer pauses, shrugs, and then continues. “pals. He needs New York stable- everyone does. That’s what matters. Business.”  
  
“…we know who did this?”  
  
“You gonna fix em?”  
  
Charlie shrugs; thought has crossed his mind.  
  
“Don’t.” Meyer says, stabbing out the cigarette on the nightstand beside the bed. The wood polish sizzles. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead. We got a job.”  
  
Charlie looks over in the dark once more before turning his attention to the ceiling that has so captured Meyer’s gaze.   
  
And there they stay for several hours; two kids in the bed of a dead man. 


	6. Blood libel, (Manny/Richard, cameos with AR, Nucky, Waxey and Tommy- PG)

  


It is two months before Richard sees the butcher again, and it’s an accident when it happens. Tommy with his hand inside Richard’s, visiting Uncle Nucky (because Jimmy called him that, and Gillian makes sure Tommy says it every time they meet because she knows how deep the bullet digs and there’s a quiet promise between them  _one day, we will be the ones to bury you- this infant and his grandmother_  although no one understands how, just yet.) runs too far ahead into Nucky’s office and finds Manny there, with Rothstein and Waxey Gordon.  
  
There is a second where every grown man in the room, save Rothstein looks guilty. The Bankroll leans forward, elbows on his knees and begins to have a conversation to Tommy. There are terse words between Waxey and Nucky that get lost in the haze.   
  
Manny is staring at the boy whose attention Rothstein has fully. It’ll become clearer, later that perhaps he wanted Thompson and Horvitz no where the child but the reasons seem unlikely for someone like the New Yorker king.   
  
“The Darmody boy?” Manny asks, and for the first time since they met that day in the shop with the promise of blades and violence  _just beyond_  the cracks, Richard would think he’s frightened of the kid.   
  
Richard gives a tiny nod.   
  
“How old is he?”   
  
“Four.”   
  
“And you watch over him?” Manny continues, meeting Richard’s gaze but only for a second. He’s accustomed to it although the reason Munya shies away today is different then before. "Since they died?”  
  
“Were murdered.”   
  
“…it was business.”  
  
“And one day,” Richard croaks gutturally, “he may understand that.”   
  
“A conversation perhaps best saved for another day, gentlemen.” Rothstein says, sharply. On cue Thompson rejoins. “That doesn’t matter here, does it?”  
  
“To Tommy. It may.” And even as Richard says it, he knows it won’t. The curse that Gillian spoke into existence about Angela already rings true about Jimmy- the father who even when he was there; wasn’t. Tommy remembers the man who put the dog tags around his neck one night like someone might put coins over the dead. Jimmy is a shadow memory from the other room and nothing else. Richard doubts he’ll have even that, in time.   
  
Had Jimmy chosen something else maybe it’d be different. He could have picked a life with his son instead of a death with his father, but his reasons are as lost to Richard as they are to Tommy. If he could speak, perhaps it would excuse a little of the heaviness in the room.   
  
Richard thinks Gillian would find this funny somehow, grown men cowed by a toddler. But perhaps that’s where her little revenge of Uncle Nucky comes from; the place where her bitter laughter may be.   
  
As Tommy and Richard leave, he sees the wolf of a man shake himself as if trying to dislodge some soul-chill. As if Manny could undo something with his guilt.   
  
And if wishes were horses… 


	7. 'Who the hell can see forever?' (AR/Swope, hints of AR/Charlie G)

The worst part, of course, is there are still pieces of Swope’s Arnold in the cold, humorless creature that prowls 49th and Broadway like a wolf. He can see him in flashes like rain off the pavement; locked behind the gloves and gray face. There’s still something like recognition in AR’s eyes when he finds Swope out in a crowd and an undercurrent in his self-mocking laughter that might be real, once upon a time. There was a time when AR could meet his eyes and it not feel he was somehow wounding his friend.   
  
And he’d fight to protect AR, just like Rothstein had done the same for him.   
  
But there are thorns too, called Lucky and Legs, so deep entrenched in the vein that if he tried to pull AR free all he’d find is blood, and there’s a fever in AR’s eyes that was always there but never this intense Swope knows neither he nor Carolyn,  _nor Lucky nor Meyer_  could ever compare to. He knows because he has the same fever.   
  
And there are times when at the Brook or Mayor Hylan’s parties, Swope sees the Sicilian who replaced him at AR’s side sidle up a little closer that Swope sees or thinks he sees a little of the way AR watched Carolyn there. He knows he’s lost his friend then, more to this boy then the fever in AR’s blood because how do you wage war against love without finding only bitterness. Without making it somehow worst.  
  
And he never had that but it was something close he's convinced himself since.   
  
And it kills Swope too because of the conversation he had with AR a few months back when the Series threatened to take him to Scotland and there was a war (and when did his friend become King, Swope knows but dares not acknowledge because it would mean owning up to his own place there.) in Atlantic City that almost cost him a kid’s life and he came to Swope, voice breaking saying,   
  
 _I don’t want to do this anymore. I'm not this man. I can't be this man. I don’t want to live like this. This isn’t me…_  
  
(And Swope ignored the memory of that night in the pool hall, the look in AR’s eyes when the other man choked…and AR did nothing but watch…because so did he and everyone else.)  
  
Swope swore he’d help and did, with his paper against the Hearst machine and he’s place by AR’s side so the cameras could see. He quoted AR when he said he’d surrender all his gambling ventures, and focus on his land deals and thought to himself, finally,  _finally, I’ll have my friend back._  
  
But then the confessions disappeared, and Thompson made a call or so Swope heard, and Fallon dripped his poisonous honey on the jury until Rothstein’s problems went away. And AR was two million richer because of the Series…  
  
A million more because of some deaths in Atlantic City Swope read about in the papers…  
  
There was a look in AR’s eyes when Swope confronted him that wasn’t his friend at all, this wolf who said,  _I don’t know what you mean…_  
  
But it was enough like him to make Swope stop pushing, although it made the goodbye harder when it came.   
  
And he still feels like he betrayed AR somehow. Like he didn’t  _fight._


	8. Break me out of here, cause it's blinding me – AR/Bobbie, PG 13

  
  
Sometimes when he can’t get hard, he flips her on her stomach and rides her in ways coarser and crueler than his pretty school boy looks and his soft hands should know.   
  
Sometimes when she’s mad at him, she’ll bite down so hard there’s blood on his shoulder but he’s usually too far gone by that point to notice the bruises and stained sheets till morning.   
  
When they stay together they don’t usually wake up till after one, and they both smell of rancid liquor, sweat and that faint scent of burnt cigarettes. Neither of them give a shit. It’s not cuddling, what comes next, with their collection of legs and arms and half-stoned laughter mixed with idle chatter but it’s the only time either of them are real, she suspects and that means a whole hell of a lot more then the ring he put on some other woman’s finger.  
  
And he says  _sometimes I think you are the only one who knows who I really am… like that means something- even though she knows everyone_ **knows**  who he really is.  
  
And she says then, baby, I love you like that means something and she hasn’t whispered it before although here, in her head, she usually means it because she know he does too even if it’s never said.  
  
And there are times when AR pulls Bobbie into his lap- not to fuck or fondle. They taste of champagne and they giggle like kids. She’ll ring the number and he’ll prank Lillian or Peggy or Dot and laugh into her shoulder before his lips pepper her skin gentler than any other lover she’s had.   
  
And there are times, when Bobbie sees AR disappear into his head, and she grabs him then- throws away the bankroll from his pocket and kisses him hard enough to bring him back to her. She tells him sometimes, they should have a baby because she knows the way he watches her nephew and half the time she means it when she tells him Carolyn doesn’t have to know.   
  
She can tell he’s tempted.   
  
She’s tempted too, when drunk on sex and so close to happy, he almost tells her he loves her and says they should run away together. Leave the cash, and cars, the names and scandals, and hop a train to somewhere else.  
  
And she’ll dance at clubs, and he’ll hustle pool; and it’ll just be them. All alone in the world.   
  
Who needs New York for that?   
  
But like the want of a drink or some confetti; the both of them eventually pull away from their playtime. She’s always known who he is, this King of New York she is only borrowing from the City. Just like she knows she’ll become bored in any place that doesn’t burn hot, fast and red like Manhattan at night. And no matter how much they love each other- it’s the City that owns their souls.   
  
Eventually, they will spark and burn out like the lights of Broadway.   
  
She can’t wait to be with him when it happens. 


End file.
